Echos many of my thoughts.

I think you may need a background change at Red Sox Beacon. Was starting to give me a headache. Might just be me being a little hungover though.

Yet has 13 posts and 9 comments?

and BTW – who is Cee Angi? and why is lone1c still a writer?

I thought it was merging with OTM

THe Rays got very lucky on pitching their team SIERA was 3.94. Translating their team SIERA to runs allowed they should allow 689 runs, subtracting their UZR from that, 634. 750 runs scored and 634 runs allowed is 93 wins. Matt Moore’s CAIRO projection has him at a 3.96 ERA. Niemann had a 3.78 SIERA. While Wade Davis was a lot worse than Moore’s projection, Moore is probably going to replace Niemann. That is not that much of an improvement. We can’t even be sure they’ll score 750 runs. You can’t rely on the last two months to project next season’s performance. If they score 707 runs, they should have 89 wins. Another way to project is just using CAIRO projections for a team. I use the depth chart from MLBdepthcharts.com. Then plugging the numbers into Tango’s MARKOV calculator the Rays should score 4.55 runs per game, or 737. It projects the REd Sox to score 5.923 runs per game, or 959. That’s insane for the sox. I’ll calculate the pitching later, but I think the Sox will win this one.
Then flasoxfan wrote this:Where to start
Matt Moore. I wrote about him last September. As I noted, fangraphs wrote:

Fans freak out when top prospects are promoted to the majors, but some promotions justifiably deserve more fanfare than others. David Price, Jeremy Hellickson, and Desmond Jenningswere all received in Tampa Bay with much excitement, but Matt Moore….this guy should be on a whole other level. He’s in an elite class of pitching prospects, and he has a chance to burst onto the scene like Lincecum, Hanson, Weaver, and Strasburg. He’s dynamite, I tell you, dynamite.
As I noted in the same article, Moore’s AAA numbers were very similar to Steven Strasburg’s, except that Moore struck out more batters. You are right, a projection says he will only go only 6 and 5 with a war of only 1.2 Moore is a baby – and maybe he will regresss. But the same projection you cite has Dice-K going 6 and 5 with a FIP of 4.21 and a war of 1.5. Good luck with that. As a Sox fan I will be thrilled if the projection is right. Very few people in baseball believe the projection you are relying on. Having seen him pitch, I don’t. Moore is an outlier – soomeone whose numbers are so unusual you don’t have many people to compare him against. The comps that do exist for Moore are frightening.

I think you are very wrong in thinking that Mat Moore will not prove to be an improvement over Neiman.

The guess here is Davis gets moved, and the Rays hold on to Neiman. In any event, if I were to make a case against the Rays pitching it would start with the bullpen and then focus on James Shields, whose FIP went form over 5 in 2010 to 3.42 in 2011. It will be interesting to see if James matches his 2011 numbers – though 2010 was clearly an outlier. Of course, in a way Shields 2011 is in some ways similar to Becketts (both had terrible 2010’s, both had great 2011’s). It is instructive that you don’t mention Price – who by some measures regressed some in 2011.

I think the Rays starting pitching will be better in 2012 than 2011. You can rely on the projections if you want. I should note, though, that I haven’t looked at whether the Rays outperformed their predicted run prevention as you have. That gives some hope, I guess.

With respect to the offense, I don’t think you get what I was saying. It is true – using two months of offense is misleading. The reason it is relevent here, though, is that the personel of the Rays offense changed enourmously in the last two months of the season. In July of 2011 the Rays bottom four were as follows: Fuld (lef), Stoppach ©, Rodriguez (2b), Brignac (ss). In Agust Fuld was replaced by Jennings, who stole 20 bases and hit 10 Home Runs in 63 games (with a war of 2.4), He was an immense improvement. The other change was to install Joyce in left, and move Zobrist to second. Essentially this meant replacing either Brignac or Rodriguez with Joyce.

I should add it is relevent here to note, as it always is with the Rays, that there are major league ready players in AAA. In particular Guyer may take over right from Joyce.

The Rays in August were a much better team offensively than they were in July. That is why those numbers are more relenent. It is kind of funny you own projection is for 4.55 runs per game (they scored 4.6 over the last two months, which kind of proves my point) but there other reasons to think the Rays will be better (Jennings will have another year, the projections you are using are much worse for Jennings than Bill James’ are), Molina is miles better than Mr .185 Kelly Stoppach, and both Brignac and Rodrigues will be pushed from Rays minor leaguers.

I think 750 runs is actually too conservative.

With respect to your estimate for Rays run prevention, these models aren’t good enough to distinguish between 634 runs allowed and 607. I think you are dead wrong about Moore, and that will matter a great deal. But truthfully I haven’t run the numbers.

Truthfully, though, the projections you cite are really a best case for the Red Sox. They project good years for Lester, Beckett and Buchholz. In those projections Lester is essentially the same pitcher as Price, Beckett’s FIP is almost identical to Shields’, and Buchholz’s numbers are better than Moores’ (though not a lot better than Neiman). This might happen. I suspect Boston is going to sign a fourth starter, and if he is comporable to Hellickson (who is arguably due for a significant regression) and Bard is OK, then the Red Sox look better than the Rays.

In that view the glass is more than half empty.

But in my view I see a starting rotation with one pitcher unlikely to come close to 2011 (see his performance in September and compare against this 2010) and another who has struggled with injuries. I see no starting depth, and a pen that will not be as good as last year. I don’t see better pitching in 2012 for the Red Sox.

That means improvement has to come from the offense. And it may get better: Crawford seriously underperformed, Sweeney is better than what we had in right, and even AGON might expect to get better. Add in a full year from Youk and the Red Sox look like they will better. Against that, though, you can argue that Ortiz’s age suggests decline, Crawford really don’t show much improvement, and does anybody really think Ellsbury will repeat his 2011?

In the end, the tough part about evaluating the Rays is that you have young players, and they can be difficult to project. The Rays believe they brought two future ALL Stars to the club in 2011 (Jennings and Moore) . If they are right, and I think they are, the Rays are better than the Red Sox.
and I wrote this
:I agree with a lot of your points
I think CAIRO is underrating Moore a little, I think the Rays will win more than 89 games of course, but that run projection is crazy for the sox. One thing I disagree with you though is about the pitching. It’s almost guaranteed to get better for me. Bard has the chance to be an ace, he has amazing stuff, I don’t think he will be, but here’s this. I guarantee you the Red Sox will get much better production out of the 4 and 5 starter spots. Lackey’s performance was arguably the worst performance by a Red Sox starter ever. He was so awful, with out him, I’m guessing we win 95 games last year. Then Miller, Weiland, and Wakefield were also absolutely awful. coolstandings.com had us at a 99.9% chance to make the playoffs at one point, we didn’t make it. The chances of that happening again are just about zero. While Ellsbury had a crazy season, he didn’t get that much BABIP luck, his BABIP was about in line with his xBABIP and Jeff Zimmerman showed on fangraphs how his batted ball distance shot up in the second half. I expect him to regress but not that much. I definitely think Crawford will get better, if he’s average, thats two wins more. I expect him to put up maybe 4 WAR. I expect the Red Sox to win from the mid to high 90s in games. I think they’ll be battling the Yankees. I do believe Jennings and Moore will be future all stars, but I don’t think they’re good enough right now. I think 737 runs is accurate, but that CAIRO projection had us at 960, assuming last year’s horrible pitching, which I think will get a lot better, we’d have a pythag record of 101 wins. Sean O and Lone David are just ridiculous, why would you assume a 90 win team, who had 98 third order wins from Clay Davenport, who won’t have maybe the worst Red Sox starting pitching season of all time, and will have Crawford bounce back a ton, win 80 games, that is just absolutely ridiculous. flasoxfan, you made a bunch of really good points, and I do think the Rays hitting will improve, but I think the Rays pitching will regress and the Red Sox hitting and Pitching will improve. I think we have a chance at 100 wins.

In fact both the Giants and Cardinals got hot at the end of their seasons.

So i believe the Sox have a great chance of winning it all in 2012.

Nobody knows how Kuroda will fair in the AL East with a short porch in Left, nobody knows if Pineda will be able to handle the AL East lineups.

We have many questions as well, but the Sox also have a lot of top talent on this squad. Sign Oswalt, add him to the Lester/Beckett/Wakefield/Lackey hunting parties and let him eat some innings and I believe the Sox will still compete and have the same chance as TB and MFY to win the East.

IMO.

We won’t win the WS again until Curt Schilling is back with the team in some form.

We haven’t been past the ALDS since he was let go.

Like the Marlins

are welcomed and unintendedly comical

he’s not Oswalt, but I am still unhappy over this.

$10 mil. for a measly one year deal sounds so cheap for this guy based upon his very decent stats last year, including a 3.07 ERA and over a 3/1 SO/BB ratio. I’m sure some stats guys here will jump in with some peripheral stats, but this guy looks pretty good to me. Couldn’t the Sox have dangled a two-year deal? Does Kuroda only want to pitch one more year? The Sox are going to need a replacement for Dice-K in 2013 anyway. I don’t think anybody here anticipates much starter help from the minors anytime soon.